The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, a peculiar document to be cited by those who championed the cause of equality. Not only did its reference to menís equal creation concern people in a state of nature before government was established, but the documentís original function was to end the previous regime, not to lay down principles to guide and limit its successor . (192)

In many ways, [Stephen] Douglasís history was more faithful to the past and to the views of Thomas Jefferson, who to the end of his life saw the Declaration of Independence as a revolutionary manifesto . Lincolnís view of the past, like Jeffersonís, in the 1770s, was a product of political controversy, not research, and his version of what the founders meant was full of wishful suppositions . (206)

In Lincolnís hands, the Declaration of Independence became first and foremost a living document for an established society, a set of goals to be realized over time . (207)

Lincoln and those who shared his convictions felt the need for a document that stated those values in a way that could guide the nation, a document that the founding fathers had failed to supply. And so they made one, pouring old wine into an old vessel manufactured for another purpose, creating a testament whose continuing usefulness depended not on the faithfulness with which it described the intentions of the signers but on its capacity to convince and inspire living Americans. (208)

[From American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1998).]